Call Center KPIs for Sales and Service: What to Measure and How to Improve
By the TalkWiz teamUpdated 7 min read
In short: a sales or service call center needs two kinds of metrics: outcome metrics (close rate, first-contact resolution, revenue) and call metrics that explain the outcome (call quality, needs discovery, objection handling, talk ratio). Outcome metrics come from the CRM and the phone system. Call metrics require analyzing what was said in the call itself.
Why the close rate alone is not enough
Two agents with the same close rate can work in completely different ways. One closes a few good calls, the other gets warmer leads. When the close rate drops, it does not say why. Call metrics answer that question: where exactly in the call customers stop.
Outcome metrics
| Metric | What it tells you | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Close rate (conversion) | How many calls ended in a deal or a commitment | CRM, the status the agent marked, call analysis |
| Follow-up rate | How many calls ended with a defined next step | Call analysis |
| Average deal value | The size of the deals that close | CRM |
| First-contact resolution (service) | How many requests were solved without a repeat call | Ticketing system, call analysis |
| Churn and retention (service) | How many customers asked to leave and stayed | CRM, call analysis |
Call metrics
| Metric | What it tells you | How to measure |
|---|---|---|
| Call quality score | How well the agent met the criteria you defined | QA scorecard, manual or automatic |
| Discovery questions | Whether the agent understood the need before presenting a solution | Count of the agent's questions |
| Agent and customer talk ratio | Who talks more in the call | Talk time from the transcript |
| Long agent monologue | A speech instead of a conversation | The longest stretch the agent talked without a break |
| Objections by type | What stops customers | Call analysis |
| Objections handled | Whether the agent answered or gave up | Call analysis |
| Status match | Whether the status the agent marked matches what happened in the call | Comparing the status with the analysis |
How to choose 5 metrics for the weekly report
Do not measure everything. A report with 20 metrics does not lead to action. A structure that works:
- One main outcome metric: for example the close rate in sales, or first-contact resolution in service.
- One quality metric: the average call score by your scorecard.
- Two behavior metrics: for example discovery questions and talk ratio, the ones most tied to results for you.
- One customer metric: the most common objection this week, or the share of angry customers.
Check every month whether the behavior metrics are linked to the outcome metric. If agents who ask more questions close more, that is the metric to coach on.
Status match: the metric most call centers do not measure
Agents mark a status at the end of every call: interested, not interested, follow-up. The call center's reports are built on those marks. But a mark does not always reflect what happened: a call marked "follow-up" with no time set, or "not interested" when the customer actually asked to be called back.
When every call is analyzed, you can compare the status the agent marked with the outcome that comes out of the call. A low match rate for a given agent is a sign to review their calls, and the data the reports are built on.
Metrics by team, campaign and product
The same metric tells a different story when you break it down:
- By campaign: a low close rate in one campaign usually points to weak leads, not weak agents.
- By product: the price objection comes up more for one product than others? Maybe the issue is how value is presented.
- By data you define: for example region, lead source or customer type. In TalkWiz you can define data to extract from every call and see the close rate for each value.
How to measure call metrics without listening to every call
Call metrics require knowing what was said. A manual sample gives unstable numbers. Automatic analysis of every call gives all the metrics in the table above for every call, agent and campaign. The guide AI Sales Call Analysis explains in full how it works.
If you want to see these metrics on your own calls, open a free account. The first 100 calls are on us.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most important metric in a sales call center?
The close rate, but on its own it explains nothing. Next to it you need metrics that explain why: call quality, how many discovery questions were asked, which objections came up and how they were handled.
What is the right talk ratio between agent and customer?
There is no magic number, but in a sales call an agent who talks most of the time usually is not discovering needs. Measure the ratio for each agent and compare it with their close rate.
How do you measure in-call metrics without listening to every call?
With automatic call analysis: every call gets a score, an outcome, objections and talk metrics, and the data adds up to reports by agent, team, campaign and product.